My 5 gallon 1.5 feet tank

[samuel88]

how was it in the shop? Possibly stress from transport

it looked fine in the shop, dunno leh, so sad, i couldn't chase the crab away in time. think i'll try again in a few weeks. maybe try acclimating it longer.

hope its not the pistol shrimp that killed it cause its way harder to catch than the crabs.

but the fish is fine though, right now lurking in a corner cause i think its still scared. i hope its scared and not in trouble.

managed to catch one of the hitchhiker crabs, argh, i'm gonna try to catch the other one.

[Zoa guy]

u can try a trap...just put some food in a glass and leave it in the aquarium...but there are quite a few flaws in my method. Or u can purchase a trap...make sure to moniter the fish health.....

[fropi]

nice

[samuel88]

thanks. haha this thread so long never update already.

maybe i might post update when time allows, alot has changed.

[Firestarter]

Please do update your thread!

[fropi]

ya lor update so that i can read please T.T

[samuel88]

Update

What happened after my last post

Ok so thing that happened after my last post from very long ago, was that there was a bacterial bloom that kinda wiped the tank. after doing much reflection and research i concluded it was because i was using tap water all along, and usually i changed water once a week,

but for whatever reason i changed it twice consecutively and i guess the tank couldn't handle the change in water chemistry further more tap water to me, is like playing russian roulette cause you never know when the water companies might suddenly add more of one thing or the other.

So feeling discouraged i passed it on to my father. who did some kinda experiment on his own, instead of placing the tank indoors, he placed it outdoors in the sun, using natural sun light as a light source. furthermore no chiller or fan was used.

Of course i'm not saying chillers are useless, but i believe it depends on what you keep, and more importantly its more about fluctuation.

i believe a huge part of why the tank survived was because of the use of RO/DI water from then on and allowing the system to stabilize. in other words, once you set up a tank a certain way, just let it run and avoid adding anything to it.

Currently

so after awhile my father kinda gave up on the tank too because it was overrun with aiptasia and it killed some LPS he put in. So i offered to put it back into my room.

so the first thing i did was fix the aiptasia problem, i added 3 peppermint shrimps and used an aiptasia killer. and the results were good.

Equipment my dad used

Dolphin HOB filter with surface skimmer, the same one a year ago.

A airstone skimmer

Equipment i'm using

same as above, plus the same T5 lighting from a year ago.

Livestock

in keeping with my theme of invertebrates and keeping the eco system lightly stocked.

3 halloween hermit crabs, 2 red leg hermits, and 3 peppermint shrimp.

and lots of caulerpa algae.

I'll talk more about my maintenance next time.

That's all, thanks for reading.